Skin Deep

Nebraska was barely warm in his grave and all Hotch could think about was fucking Nebraska’s girl. As crass as it sounded, as irreverent as it felt, he needed one last connection with his best friend. Hotch scrubbed a hand over his face, wishing he’d thought to bring a flask. It would help ease the pain. Something had to.

The last time he’d seen the easy-going, tow-headed Nebraska native Troy O’Neal, they had been in the Gulf. There’d been nothing new about the maneuver, no chinks in the game plan. They’d stood inside the Navy SEAL modified submarine, waiting for orders to deploy. The trunk had been silent. Nebraska had sent him one of his wide, toothy grins as the doors locked and the compartment filled with seawater. The pressure equalized. The five of them would swim up the side of the sub to the breathing station near the top, conserving their rebreathers for the long swim to shore. Then they would hang out at the breathing station waiting for the last ten members of the Skins team.

But something had gone wrong. The outer door jammed eighteen inches from the bottom. They were used to working in tight spaces, so when the opening held steady, Hotch and the others had squeezed through with their rebreathers in hand, instead of on their backs. Nebraska held the team record for holding his breath underwater, and he waved the others on until he could wedge through to safety. The sickening clarity of memory replayed the rusty, cranking sound of steel against steel as the doors unjammed, reversed and crushed his best friend’s ribs in an unyielding vise.

Hotch had known instantly that it was too late. It was the flag of blood trailing from the corner of Nebraska’s mouth that had given it away well before the lifeless float of his limbs.

Bile still filled Hotch’s throat when he thought about it—when he remembered the muted shouts through the trunk porthole where the other men impotently watched. Hotch had planted his feet on the door, grabbing Nebraska’s arms and pulling with everything he had. One of the other team members had held back at the sound of the door closing instead of swimming up to the docking station. He’d tried to get the rebreather into Nebraska’s mouth.

Nebraska’s ribs crackled beneath the steel jaw. His body tore in a cloud of blood before they finally got the door stopped. Half in, half out, bisected and all dead, Hotch was left to float there, holding Nebraska’s upper body. Darkness closed around Hotch’s vision.

An auxiliary trunk opened. Divers pried his fingers from Nebraska’s body and pushed it inside the trunk lock for the last group to retrieve. Too deprived of oxygen and losing consciousness, Hotch finally accepted a rebreather. Two teammates took either arm and swam him to the breathing station.

Commander Hawking ordered them to proceed with the mission. Death was an expected outcome in this job, he’d said later. If you survived, that was a government perk. It still left a sour taste in Hotch’s mouth.

A hand dropped on his shoulder, bringing him back to the moment. Nebraska’s mom pulled out the chair beside him and sat. Hotch took her hand between his. “You holding up okay, Mrs. O’Neal?”

“The only easy day was yesterday,” she quoted the SEAL training mantra with a sad twist to her lips.

It hurt to look at her. She had the same slightly strawberry tint to her blonde hair and cornflower blue eyes. Her callused hand between his larger ones, made him think of other things, like what would happen next for her? Who would take care of her now that Nebraska was gone? A widow and now childless, she lived alone on land she’d long since leased out to neighboring farmers. He froze out the thoughts as they came, preferring the emotional wasteland where he’d been operating since Nebraska had died.

“Whatever you need, Mrs. O’Neal, you tell me,” he said.

Her eyes welled up with tears. “You don’t owe me anything.” She patted his hands with her other one.

“He was like a brother to me,” Hotch confessed.

“I know.”

“I couldn’t get to him.” He stopped himself from saying more. The mission had been secret and he wasn’t sure how much Nebraska’s mom had been told about the accident.

“I know,” she said softer still, cupping his cheek. “He’d have known too.”

Hotch took another deep breath. “I mean it, Mrs. O’Neal. Anything you need, I’ll take care of it.”

Mrs. O’Neal turned her head, her eyes locking on Nebraska’s girl. “She needs you.”

“Erin?” She barely resembled the faded picture Nebraska had kept of her in his breast pocket.

Mrs. O’Neal nodded. “I married a Navy man, and I knew the risks. When I lost my husband, I at least had that much comfort. I can say the same for my son. My boys died in service to their country. But Erin won’t be told anything about Troy’s death. She won’t have anyone to talk to or anyone who will talk to her.”

“I can’t tell her much.”

“But you can be there for her, son.” Mrs. O’Neal’s light blue eyes were direct. “You were Troy’s best friend. She was his best girl. He was going to ask her to marry him next Christmas.”

Hotch nodded, remembering the clear joy on Nebraska’s face when he’d shown Hotch the ring. He’d vibrated with so much life it seemed impossible that he’d been extinguished so young. That his lifeless body, trapped between the trunk and the ocean and waiting limply for the mission to end while Hotch had been powerless to save him. To give him the dignity of pulling him to dry dock moments after it had happened. All the impending potential for joy, crushed into impotence in the span of a few heartbeats and one mission away from proposing to his girl.

He wondered if Erin would forgive him. He couldn’t forgive himself. She nodded in conversation with a family member over a plate of untouched potato salad. The ham and cheese bun resembled more of a loadstone than sustenance. She was gracious and more beautiful than Nebraska had let on.

Hotch tried to remember things he’d heard about her. Green eyes, brown hair. That stuff he could see for himself, but the other things Nebraska had told him about her, the fact that she preferred wild flowers to roses, had a birthmark smudge under her left shoulder blade, that she made love with her eyes closed and didn’t get along with her father—those were things he knew that weren’t visible. Those were things Nebraska had discovered and passed along to his best friend.

Mrs. O’Neal dropped a peck on his cheek, tearing his attention away from the girl for a moment as she reminded him that he needed to talk to Erin. She had questions, Mrs. O’Neal told him. Who the hell didn’t? Hotch wondered. But he agreed. Nebraska would want him to. And Hotch had something to give her, some little piece that he held onto that belonged to her now that Nebraska was dead.

Hotch walked over to her. Erin looked at him through eyes the color of cloudy green sea glass. She blinked at him distractedly but finished her conversation with a woman next to her.

He wondered if everything felt like it moved in slow motion to her too. The voices were muted, as though the words were spoken through cotton, the intensity of the industrial fluorescent tubes overhead leeched the color from faces and clothing alike, and though they were in a fellowship hall where noise echoed dully, Hotch couldn’t shake the dreamlike feel of his surroundings.

Except for her. She gave his eyes an anchor. She loosened the tight fist of emotion that banded his lungs. He didn’t even feel anything beyond the wool cuffs of his naval uniform.

Numbness. That’s what it was. His whole body, all his senses had died with Nebraska O’Neal. The older woman moved on, and Erin lifted her face to give him her full attention. She looked tired. Did she feel numb too?

“Erin, I’m—”

“Lieutenant Micah Hotchkiss. Hotch. He talked about you,” she said.

She didn’t smile. Her eyes grew moist and though she blinked the tears back, her gaze didn’t waver. Nebraska would have been proud of her strength. Hotch was, and he was only half in love with her based on rose-colored stories told by a lovesick SEAL. She’d been myth for so long—someone he’d been nearly convinced Nebraska had made up. But looking at her now, he could see why his friend had been over the moon for her.

As soon as he thought it, the guilt took over, and he pushed the fledgling stir of attraction aside. Some best friend he was.

“I have something of his for you.” Hotch reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a worn, faded picture of Nebraska kissing a laughing Erin’s cheek. “He took it everywhere.”

She accepted it, tears falling freely now. He wouldn’t have known she was crying if he hadn’t seen it. She made no noise.

He also held out a key. “This is his too. I have the box in my car.”

“What is it?”

Hotch shifted his weight. He hadn’t prepared an explanation. There really wasn’t an adequate way to describe the kill-box filled with all the things a soldier didn’t want family to know about him. Usually it was up to the buddy to get rid of it. In this case, Hotch had been instructed to give it to her. Nebraska never had anything to hide anyway.

“Something he asked me to give you in the event of his death.”

She nodded. “The kill-box.”

She knew?

“He told me about it. I just forgot. I never expected him to die.” She laughed through the tears. “Youth is invincible, right? And the SEALs, they never give up.”

“He didn’t give up.”

Her eyes pled with him to continue. How could he? Even if he were allowed to tell her the details, would she want to know that her lover’s last minutes were crushing pain and drowning? That he’d been split in half? That the only fortunate thing about the way he’d died is that his rib must have punctured his heart and killed him seconds before his body was torn in two? The alternative suffering would have been more horrific than the actual death.

Hotch still had the nightmares, replaying over and over, about how he could have saved Nebraska. How he should have been the one who waved the others on. Nebraska had someone to live for back home. Hotch didn’t. It should have been him.

“I need to get out of here,” Erin blurted, gripping his forearm. “Take me out of here? I need to be alone, but I don’t want to be—alone.”

He nodded, pulling his arm back until their hands touched, then he squeezed her fingers. “We’ll get that box.”

“Thank you.”

He understood. Words were useless. They spilled from between numb lips with about as much sentiment as cold oatmeal. The words were a distraction from the pain inside, from the flight of thought and the ache of loss. He had no use for them, and she appeared just as fatigued from trying to use words adequately, of trying to think of responses when all her being just wanted to feel and keep feeling because Nebraska no longer could. Because Nebraska was dead and gone and no amount of stupid, pointless talking about it would bring him back. No amount of wishing would reverse it. He knew. He’d tried. He’d begged. He’d failed.